Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1887-01-15
IN THE LUMBER REGION

1.-THE lumberman's days work is from
daylight until dark. No matter how
far his working ground is from the
camp he must be on the spot by day
light and not leave 1t till he can see to
work no longer, though he may be ten
Or fifteen miles from the shanty. The
size of the camps varies from ten to
seventy-five and one hundred men, and
as a rule they are all Woodworking, So
Der men.
"They live in low, log shanties," con-
tinued my friend. "The first thing a
camp does is to construct their abiding
place and then cut main road through
the woods to the river in which it is in
tended to dump the logs. AS soon as
the frost comes on and the ground is
hard the chopping begins. There is one
man known as a Chopper who is fol-
lowed by two men who saw the tree
into logs; next come a 'swamper' and
'chainer'-the 'skidaway' men, with a
yoke of oxen. The 'swamper' strips the
logs and the 'chainer' fastens chain to
them so that they can be hauled to the
skidaway, which is two trees cut down
and placed four feet apart and laid at
right angles to the road and on which
the logs are piled. From this they are
taken on broad sheds to the river and
dumped over the bank on to the ice.
The logs are cut from twelve to thirty
feet long and, where we are, are all
white or Norway pine Their thickness
varies from eight inches to five feet.
"The river we use is the east fork of
the Black river, which takes them to
Lacrosse. The pay of the lumberman is
from SIG to $26 month and board.
They don't draw their pay till the spring;
and then there are high times in the
towns along the river. Many spend all
their earnings in drink, in spree
which lasts two or three days. Acct
dents among the lumbermen? Oh, yes,
lots of them. Many are injured and
killed by limbs of trees falling on them,
drowning or cutting themselves with an
axe.
Very cold sometimes? Well, people
here would think SO, but we don't mind
it much, as a rule. Last winter the
weather average q degrees below zero
for six weeks, and the men think moth
ing of working in weather when the rec
ord is 20 to 30 below zero. But have
seen it so cold there that mems ears,
noses, hands and feet would freeze and
they couldn't work-so cold that when
q man would catch hold of an axe he
couldn't hold it. These times are only
rare, however.-Cor. New York Mail
md Express"
The Cold Air Cure.
The evidence that pulmonary COM
plants are inevitably and exclusively
caused by foul indoor air, and cured by
pure, especially by cold-pure, outdoor
air, can grow convincing to degree al
most affective to philanthropist, who
must often feel like traveller seeing his
companions cropping in the gloom of
subterranean labyrinth, and refusing to
follow the clew that has led him back to
the sunshine of the upper world. The
remedial influence of fresh air is so
much increased by low temperature
that colds" are, in fact, far more cur
able in midwinter than in midsummer.
l was shot through the lungs in Mexico,
and have ever since been susceptible to
the contagion ola "catarrh factory, as
friend of mine calls the unventilated
school rooms and meeting houses of our
country towns. In warm weather 1
avoid such man-traps as l would the pit
of gas well, but in winter risk their
infection in the assurance that its influ-
ence can be counteracted by an extra
dose of ice air. On returning from
crowded lecture hall, a sitting sick
room, stuffy omnibus, ETC., remo-e
my bed to the draft side of the house
and open window to the full capacity
of its mechanism, taking care to go to
sleep facing the draft. / have often
awakened in the morning with my hair
grizzled with hoar frost, but without
the slightest vestige of the catarh which
had announced its approach the night
before.
Cold is an antiseptic and powerful
digestive stimulant; and here record
the prediction that the hospitals of the
future will beice-houses. Dyspepsia, ca
tarrh, and fevers of all kinds can be
frozen out of the system. Not by let
ting patient shiver in a snow-bank, but
by giving him an extra allowance of bed
clothing, with the additional luxury. of
breathing ice-cold air, which, under
such circumstances becomes as prefera-
Die to hot miasma as cold spring water
to warm ditch water. have also found
that the best brain work can be done in
a cold room, and that stove heat has a
tendency to stultify like narcotic bev-
erage. Warm wraps make fires tolera-
bly, dispensable. DIR. Felix L. Oswald In